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With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps cover

With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps

Chapter 2: PREFACE
By George Edward Mannering
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About This Book

A mountaineer recounts five seasons of climbing and exploration in New Zealand's Southern Alps, describing routes, attempts on Aorangi (Mount Cook) and neighboring summits, glacier travel on the Hooker, Tasman, Murchison and Onslow glaciers, and the region's geography, climate, vegetation, and glacial formations. The narrative mixes practical guidance on equipment, camps, and river and ice crossings with observational natural history, photographic illustrations, and a survey-derived map, while examining moraine deposition, snow-line variation, and the impressive scale and character of the alpine landscape.

PREFACE

This short work contains the story of five seasons’ climbing and exploring in the New Zealand Alps. Most of the material embodied in it has already appeared from time to time, in rather a different form, in the Christchurch (N.Z.) ‘Weekly Press.’

The author trusts that the publication of the same in book form, together with a map of the locality and a few photographic reproductions, will supply a want in the shape of a guide-book to the Alpine mountain district which is already beginning to be felt by tourists in New Zealand; and he hopes that the contents may not prove uninteresting to the general public, more especially to Swiss and Caucasian climbers, few of whom are perhaps aware of the extent and nature of the New Zealand Alpine chain.

The map is compiled by the New Zealand Government Survey Office from the work of Mr. T. N. Brodrick, Government Surveyor, and that of Dr. R. von Lendenfeld. The illustrations are from photographs by Messrs. Wheeler and Son. Their operator has in several mountain expeditions accompanied the author, who takes this opportunity of expressing his thanks to the New Zealand Government Survey Department, and to Messrs. Wheeler, for their kind assistance.

It will doubtless be said that the summit of Aorangi has not yet been attained: quite true. Like Mr. Green, the author and his friend were ‘wise in time.’ Yet it is only a quibble to dispute the ascent of the mountain, for being on the ice-cap of Aorangi is like being on the topmost rung of a ladder, and yet not upon the projections above that step.

Christchurch, New Zealand:
April 13, 1891.